Category Archives: Coffee

February is a weird month. Real holidays are over, the sun sets around 3:00pm, and goddammit the most commercial, disappointing holiday on earth is around the corner.

What’s worse is the singles turn into cynical winos and the couples get obnoxiously baha-sucker-we’ve-found-love-and-you-haven’t allll over the internet. Then there’s the random few who ignore all that and haven’t given up on their New Year’s resolutions, making the rest of us feel bad about quitting our weight loss goals…but a tiny bit better about ourselves that we aren’t taking gym selfies every damn day.

This isn’t an exhaustive list of the people of February, but those are the majority, at least in my world. This leaves the rest of us at their mercy as they take over Facebook, Twitter, et al., forcing us remaining social media prowlers to long for our true calling as gardeners.*

*I say gardeners because none of you are gardeners. Nope, you are on the internet right now reading this or the annoying aforementioned posts. Gardeners aren’t on the internet all day. They work. Unlike you.

So what I can offer are some things to cheer you up and get you out of the February funk. I fall victim to its power as well, so I don’t say any of this with smugness or real authority, simply in camaraderie that we are all in this together. Thinking about these things can surely get you through this insufferable month, no matter where you are in life.

At Least Your Team Isn’t the Seahawks

Figure 2: Uuuuuuuugh.

Mine is, so I had the fucking worst first week of February ever. I felt bad for everyone who had to talk to my mourning crabby self, but worse for me because I had to deal with me 24 hours a day. I’ve read enough commentary on why we didn’t give the ball to Lynch but still….WHY GOD, WHY?!?!

If your team is the Seahawks, well, my condolences, fellow 12. I’ll hang with you in solidarity as we go drown our sorrows in 2014 Super Bowl highlights and superfluous bags of skittles because let’s face it, this still burns.

At Least You Aren’t Kanye West

Seriously. Depending on how you look at it, being married to a porn star with a child named after a compass could be enough reason enough to believe your life is better than his. But given that his brain function has slowed to the drudge-like level of wholly believing that Beyonce – a fine performer, yes – is more of an artist than Beck….well that’s the bottom of the barrel.

Figure 3: Yay that’s not you!

You aren’t Kanye, so you are winning no matter what you’re doing right now. Even if it’s picking your nose and your office mate just caught you but won’t say anything and now it’s really awkward.

Well I’m not polite and yes I saw you and good God, get a hold of yourself. This is why we can’t have nice things.

We Lost Stephen Colbert, But We Still Have Jon Stewart

Wait…what…hang on…someone just handed me something. HE RESIGNED TUESDAY???? February, will you never stop?!?!

I shit you not my mother does this to me. Here’s the hand towel I got this year:

Figure 4: Tangible evidence mother has given up hope I’ll give her grandchildren.

While I’m somewhat certain this is for taunting purposes, I’m completely sure it’s because she has no faith that a dude would be willing to purchase a pink thing vomited on by hearts for the purposes of a fabricated holiday. It’s like when she said I wasn’t going to graduate high school because I was late all the time and those tardies turned into absences and those absences started chipping away at my grade and I was in danger of flunking English.

But my clever self decided to leverage the fact that I worked at a coffee shop before first period. See it wasn’t really my fault I was late – I was late because I was a go-getter (and needed money for weed Bibles).

So as a solution to my plight I brought zee teacher lattes on the mornings I was late and somehow those tardies started racking up less frequently. Long story short I passed the course and I will pull the same clever shit on some unwitting fellow who will be just walking along and he’ll be all BAM, look at that chick married to Russell Wilson.

And that chick will be meeeeee.

At Least You Don’t Have a Blog

Congratulations. You have way better things to do with your time than sit around infusing your ideas into the internet. Your life isn’t laid out for the general public to critique and you likely have healthier outlets for your everyday thoughts like talking to people or sports or sex or something. Congraaaaatu-fucking-lations.

OK But For Realskiis…..

I say most things ever in jest, but here’s the real deal. I’ve noticed a recent onslaught of social media lamenting of both the life-effing-sucks and the lonely heart variety. That kinda bums me out and I hate being bummed out, so I offer this to cheer you up.

And so you stop bumming me out.

Solution 1:

Wield Your Inner He-Man/She-Ra

If you don’t get these references it means you’re too young so get off my lawn and read a blog about Justin Bieber.

Figure 5: You can be the boy or the girl, I won’t tell.

For the rest of us, sometimes the best way to get over feeling weak is to be strong for someone else. I was feeling sorry for myself the other day about something stupid because shit, I’m not a robot. Then I got a text from a friend who had waaaay worse news than I did.

While I felt empathy, his/her news affected me in some way and kinda derailed some plans I had. At that moment I had two options of thought patterns:

“WTF, this bullshit thing happened to me and now THIS? Universe have you no mercy?!”

“My friend needs me and I need to pull my head out of my ass.”

I went with the latter option and got over myself. Why? Well for starters I’m not the worst. And also because The second we stop taking ourselves so seriously, we can be there for someone else. Having strength for them not only helps he/she who needs it, but you who needed to demonstrate strength to prove to yourself you’ve got this.

And by the way, you totally do and I can prove it. Here in the great labyrinth of adulthood, you’ve been dumped. You’ve failed professionally. You’ve survived that stumble home from accepting too many Fireball shots because that asshole just wouldn’t text you back and perhaps you fell on a random lawn once or twice. But you got up like a champion, every time, and by the way, you didn’t die.

Solution 2:

Do Something You Wish Someone Would Do For You

I have ridiculous daydreams all the damn time. I think it’s comes with the territory of being a writer, but shit, it’s allll the time.

Figure 6: Marriage, perfected.

I’ll imagine random acts of kindness everywhere, like while in line for coffee someone will buy a struggling mother her coffee, or for me waking up to love-inducing music beyond my balcony, or finding flowers on my car, or experiencing a trained toucan flying a note to me tagging that now I’m it and I’m about to play the biggest game of tag with flying birds and my friends.

Right?? It’s getting embarrassing, and now it’s on the internet.

So, how cool would it be if I lived out just one of these daydreams by making it happen for someone else? I guess sometimes I get fearful that my spontaneous do-gooding won’t be reciprocated (from experience, but that’s why you run from the stupids). But I reference my previous point – Get. Over. Self.

The big thing, then, is to not expect something in return. Do cool shit for other people just because you’re that awesome. And yeah, I’m writing this partially to motivate myself because shoo-dang, after your house has been bombed a few times, you get battle fatigue.

But let’s keep going. Let’s do something stupid nice for someone else solely for the purpose of making their day. Kind of like a martyr, only you end up a little less dead.

“Is there actually green tea in the green tea smoothie?” I realized it sounded like a dumb question but decided to ask anyway. I was at Starbucks after all and chances were pretty good it was just a blend of green sugar and milk. The cashier, a 19-year-old dude with his brown hair swished haphazardly to one side, stared at me blankly. I debated if I didn’t say it loud enough or if his brain had slowed to a dilatory level.

“We are out of the green tea smoothie!” chimed/shouted a barista from the bar, turning her head over her shoulder while she was mixing an orange concoction in the blender.

“Welp, that settles it!” I said jokingly with a smile and relief. There were two girls behind the bar and my dim-witted cashier, and all stared back at me with no response. Clearly my attempt to lighten the situation fell flat on its ass.

“There are no green tea smoothies,” said my friend interrupting the silence, furrowing his brow as though I were a mad woman.

“Yes there are. Look, right there, on the menu. Under frappuccinos.” I pointed to the menu behind the cashier in an effort to prove my point.

“Ooooh! You want a green tea frappuccino,” realized barista #2, shaking her head at my confusion.

“Is there a difference?” I asked.

All three of the white kids in their green aprons and alternative hair styles widened their eyes and nodded in agreement. “Oh yea. BIG difference,” said barista #1. They all seemed to pity me as though I had just handed them a drawing of a duck and said it was a calculus equation. The two girls behind the bar looked at each other as barista #2 rolled her eyes.

For whatever reason I didn’t turn around and walk out, nor did I reach my hand over the bar to slap the little snot. Instead I smiled politely and asked for a small, which of course was corrected by the cashier as a “tall.”

I suppose these people have a reason why they behave this way. This particular coffee shop is in a wealthy neighborhood of San Diego county, so they are probably bullied around a lot by crabby businessmen and women dripping with diamonds and sass. Walking in I passed two Porches, a Tesla, and something so fancy I was afraid of it. What if I walked too closely to the gorgeous vehicle it spoke to me in a deep british accent? “Madam, step away from the car.” I hate being bossed around by machines so I was careful to keep my distance.

There’s also a reason that businessmen are crabby and ladies rolling in cash may have an extra dose of sass. The businessmen constantly have their eye on their company’s bottom line, their boss hovered over their shoulder as they pray for an increase in sales this quarter so they can keep their jobs for just a little while longer.

All the while the women are busy in their offices trying to balance the budget and fend off slaps on their asses by sexist cubicle mice. Then they stop at the yoga studio after work to keep that slap-able ass tight so their friends will still like them, their husbands will stay interested and they feel somewhat good about themselves. Exhausted after a long day, they come to Starbucks to get a nonfat, sugar-free latte for a little splurge and relief, only to find the little snot behind the counter made it with full fat milk. She didn’t spend the last hour and a half in a 110 degree studio just to put it all back on with a drink. So the garbage of the day falls on the unwitting barista, who in turn treats me like a dumbass when I don’t know the fucking difference between a frappuccino and a smoothie.

The point is, the experiences we have throughout the day do not stand alone, ever. My choice not to bust out my attitude on those brats was an attempt to stop this stupid cycle of people being rude to each other. Yes, I’m turning around and telling you about it on the internet, but that’s just because I’m normal and I couldn’t believe how ridiculous that interaction was and frankly had to pass it on.

Like I was saying, these experiences don’t happen in a vacuum, each interaction will set some of the tone for how the next one will go. Everytime I’m rude to someone, I’m giving them my shit to carry and have at least a teeny tiny affect on them. Maybe they were having a really good day and I put a damper on it. Or maybe they were having the worst day ever and I just convinced them that people are, in fact, evil and they should go home and cry into a full pint of Ben and Jerry’s.

I do not want to be the cause for ice cream overdoses. Nor do I want anyone to remember me as a bitch if I can help it. I can’t control much about what people think of me, but what I can control is myself. I can be a reason that people feel a little bit better about the world or a little bit worse about it.

Today you are most likely going to run into a lot of people. Many of them will be cordial (I hope), but some are going to say stupid shit to you that you can’t believe. That doesn’t make them a terrible person, necessarily, but even if they are it doesn’t matter. That’s an opportunity for you to make their day a little better. That can be done either by refraining to be rude right back or deciding to say something kind instead.

Remember, you have no idea what they are going through. It can be tough out there. Be the reason someone’s life is a little better today.

And by the way the green tea frappuccino was a tall cup of sugar topped with whipped cream and I could only drink half of it. Hell, I can barely spell the word frappuccino, let alone drink it. I mean is it one c and two p’s? The other way around? I don’t know or care, so lesson #2, don’t order drinks you can’t spell.